Catholic symbology of roses

When I was about 10 years old, I started collecting rose thorns. I gathered dying roses and let them dry in my closet, hanging beside my favorite childhood dresses. When the roses were so dry that the petals could disintegrate in my hands, I broke off their thorns with my little fingers, often pricking myself in the process. I gathered them all in a glass jar and looked at them, quietly wondering to myself why such a beautiful flower would have such wounding stems.

It is odd that the rose — arguably one of the most beautiful flowers — grows on an ugly plant. When they are not blooming, rose bushes look ghastly. They are covered in thorns and their branches are sparse. Without flowers, a rose bush is just a barren shrub.

That ugly rose rush teaches us something.

In Church Tradition, Mary is often referred to as the mystical rose. The fact that roses crown an ugly bush lends depth to the analogy. The thorny, ugly bush is Eve, whose act of pride allowed sin to enter into mankind. Like the rose thorns that pricked my fingers as a child, Eve’s sin wounded all women to come after her.

Mary crowns this imperfection with grace, like the beautiful rose atop the ugly bush. Her act of total trust and surrender to God, summarized in her fiat, corrected Eve’s distrust. Her perfection crowned the ugliness of Eve's sin.

A rose — thorns and all — is a perfect picture of the Mary’s role in the story of salvation. Bernard of Clairvaux, a mystic and doctor of the Church, writes that "Eve was a thorn, wounding, bringing death to all; in Mary we see a rose, soothing everybody's hurts, giving the destiny of salvation back to all." Through Mary, the Church flowered.

Our thorns are part of our beauty.

What is true for the church is also true for us individually. Our thorns are our brokenness, our distrust in God and in our loved ones, our broken relationship to our body, our addictions and sins. Those thorns continually wound us. But Mary reveals how those wounds are part of the whole — and how the whole rose bush is beloved and delightful to God.

Your wounds are part of your beauty, just as thorns are part of the rose bush. God’s glory is found in crowning those thorny branches with the beauty of the rose. With Paul, we hear God whisper to us, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Roses are powerful on the wedding altar.

This is part of why I think that roses are such a powerful flower to include in your wedding bouquet. They not only symbolize Mary, but they symbolize her intercession for a couple’s holiness. A bride and groom each come to marriage with any number of thorns in their side, as Paul would say. We are all wounded and in the grips of sin. Mary teaches us that God wants to crown those wounds with His glory. Like the mystical rose atop an ugly bush, He wants to crown our brokenness with abundant and stunningly beautiful grace.

“In dangers, in hardships, in every doubt, think of Mary, call out to Mary” (Bernard of Clairvaux).

Interested in including roses that will last forever in your wedding bouquet? Explore my floral collections for Marian-inspired bouquets with hyper-realistic roses.

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